Park Time Planning! Help!

[princess_jamie]

I'm trying to leverage all of the brilliant people on these forums, so I'm asking for help with some of the stuff I posted in my PTR.

My sister and I are heading for a sister trip and our first time seeing Christmas at Disneyland on Dec 3-7.

We got a surprise upgrade to 4 day park hopper tickets instead of just 3, so our first day we will be getting in some park time that we weren't initially planning on, so it has kind of changed my planning mind! DL park is open until midnight. We land at LAX around 11am and I figure we can absolutely be in the parks by 3 or 4pm – we are taking a karmel shuttle to our hotel and then by the time we figure out if we can check in and get lunch, pick up our park tickets, etc then we will head into the parks!


Our goal for Saturday is to watch PTN (so excited!) and see what rides we can get on. I know it’ll be busy that day, so I don’t have too high of expectations. It’ll be great to be able to get bonus time in the parks since we weren’t planning on going Saturday initially.


I’m trying to figure out the best way to plan the next three days. We plan to be at rope drop all three days and want to make sure we see WOC, the fireworks, the Christmas Parade, Mickey and the Magical Map, and ride lots of rides. We aren’t sure if the best approach is to do one full day in DL, one full day in DCA, and one day park hopping, or if we should do a bit of park hopping each day.


I kind of see a couple of different options...


Option A:

Sunday Dec 4 – Rope drop at DL, rides from 8am until our Plaza Inn Breakfast reservation at 1040am, then park hop to DCA after breakfast and spend the day there until WOC (at 9p or 1015 – haven’t decided) and then park hop back to DL after for another hour to two (or go home, but thats unlikely )
Monday Dec 5 – Rope drop at DCA, spend the whole day there until 9pm, and then park hop back over to DL for the last 3 hours
Tuesday Dec 6 – Rope drop at DL and full day at DL


Including the Saturday time spend at Disneyland, this works out to be about 60% of the time at DL, 40% at DCA, even though it seems like we pretty much get two full days at DCA. The downside to this plan though is there is no Mickey and the Magical Map on Tuesday, so we’d either have to do it on Saturday, or change our plans a bit.


Option B:

Sunday Dec 4 – Rope drop at DL, rides from 8am until our Plaza Inn Breakfast reservation at 1040am, then park hop to DCA after breakfast until mid afternoon, park hop back to DL for Mickey and the Magical Map around 415pm, and then park hop after back to DCA for WOC (again, either9pm or 1015pm)
Monday Dec 5 – Rope drop at DCA, spend the whole day there until 9pm, and then park hop back over to DL for the last 3 hours
Tuesday Dec 6 – Rope drop at DL and full day at DL


This works out to about 65% of our time at DL and 35% of our time at DCA.

Option C:

Sunday Dec 4 – Rope drop at DL, ride rides for a few hours, see Mickey and the Magical Map's first showing, then park hop to DCA for the afternoon and WOC
Monday Dec 5 – Plaza Inn Breakfast at DL at 840a, then head to DCA for opening at 10a (not likely we'd line up for rope drop but as soon as we are done breakfast we'd head there)
Tuesday Dec 6 – Rope drop at DL and full day at DL

We have two Plaza Inn breakfast times because I was initially indecisive so it gives us a few options, but we will only do one breakfast.

I figure that Sunday is a great time to see WOC because there is two showings and there is lots going on at DL (PTN) to keep some of the crowds away from WOC and someone mentioned on another post that WOC dessert party was sold out for the Monday and Tuesday we are there, which may be an indication of higher crowds, and since there is no evening parade at DL.

I am so torn! I know I will get there and be like.. plans.. what plans! But I feel like if I can make a good strategy that would be really helpful and would make it easier to stick to a plan. I can't believe we leave a month tomorrow!! Ahh!!

 

[theluckyrabbit]

Just posted the following on your PTR thread:

Just some things to consider:
Candlelight Processional (DL's Christmas pageant) will take place 12/3&4, 2 shows each night (5:30pm and 7:45, I think). The show takes place in front of the train station in Town Square. This means the Town Square area, the train station, and part of Main Street will be either taken up by seating, lighting, sound equipment, etc. or by guests wanting to view the show. If you want to see the show (highly recommend it!), get there early to line up for a good spot. If you want to skip the show, you might want to enter DL via the Monorail to skip the main entrance area congestion. The Monorial will drop you off in Tomorrowland. Because of CP, PTN will only show once at 10:30pm on Dec. 3rd and 4th.
Try to see fireworks early in your visit. It is fairly common for the show to be cancelled due to winds at higher elevations (so you might feel not even a breeze on the ground, but the show could still be cancelled). If you try on one of your first days and the show gets cancelled, you still have other chances to try again. WOC hardly ever gets cancelled.
Park hopping is so easy at DLR, and FPs are not linked between the 2 parks, so you could hold FPs for 2 rides simultaneously (one in each park). I think you'll find yourself going back and forth between the parks more often than you expect.
Don't stress too much about all the planning! Even during peak times, DLR is much more relaxed than WDW. I would suggest making PS (Priority Seating) reservations for any TS restaurants you really want to try (e.g. Blue Bayou). That way you won't have to worry about getting a table at the place you want, at the time you want.
As for tattoos, there is a kiosk in DtD that does henna tattoos and lots of shops carry temporary Disney tattoos for kids. Maybe one of those options will work out.
Your trip sounds like so much fun! Make sure to come back with a post TR!

 

[princess_jamie]

Thanks!! That is a lot of info but all good things. I think we will try to see the fireworks on the first night and see what happens. When I realized we were going to get park time on the Saturday, my goal was to make sure we saw things like PTN and the fireworks the first night because then it opens up more time other nights if we wanted to do rides while others are doing those things. I never really considered trying to see the Candellight Processional. I don't know too much about it but might have to do some research!

 

[5forMickey]

If you have upgrade to a 4 day pass does it include Magic Morning at Disneyland? If so I would highly recommend using it. We find we get 80% of our rides done during the early entry. Also, do they still have the PTN dinning reservations at BB? If yes and that is a goal I would highly recommend that also. I also really enjoyed our WOC dessert package, it's so wonderful not to have to stress about a spot and waste precious time getting there early (plus it's pretty sweet on tired feet). And then just park hop......if one park get's busy hop over to the other.

theluckyrabbit has great advice about PS reservations that is probably the only thing at DL that you really have to plan ahead for. One year I am going to go just to see the Candellight Processional ... it sounds great!

Most important -- have a great trip!!

 

[princess_jamie]

We do get one Magic Morning and the only day we will use it is the Tuesday. That does mean though that we won't get any days at DCA where there isn't EMH before we enter. Oh well. Hopefully it will be manageable. Just trying to make a good plan to make sure we ride TOT and RSR a few times, plus some of other big rides at DCA.

I haven't heard anything suggesting they are doing PTN dining reservations. Even so, it may be out of our budget.

Thanks!! We are very excited!

 

[theluckyrabbit]

With only 2 of you going, PTN viewing shouldn't be a huge problem. You don't need to be sitting on the curb for a great view. There is very good viewing standing in the 2nd row which shouldn't require super long waits. Keep watching the area you want, then as it starts filling up, pick your spots. You can always have one of you save the spots while the other one goes for snacks, drinks, etc. to enjoy while you are waiting.